UN Security Council Set to Vote Against Taliban Bans on Women and Girls
Ayaz Gul
VOA News
April 27, 2023
ISLAMABAD — The United Nations Security Council is set to vote Thursday to demand Afghanistan’s Taliban leadership swiftly reverse their restrictions on women’s access to education and work and to condemn a recent ban on U.N. local female staff.
The draft resolution, seen by VOA, expresses “deep concern at the increasing erosion of respect for the human rights and fundamental freedoms of women and girls in Afghanistan by the Taliban.”
The United Arab Emirates and Japan jointly drafted the resolution, with diplomats expecting it to be adopted by the 15-member council.
The resolution being put to the vote would describe the ban on female Afghan staff as “unprecedented” in the history of the United Nations, saying it “undermines human rights and humanitarian principles.” It would reaffirm “the indispensable role of women in Afghan society.”
The ban on female U.N. staff and women working for nongovernmental organizations in Afghanistan “will negatively and severely impact” U.N. operations in the country, including the delivery of life-saving aid and basic services
Thursday’s vote will come as U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres plans to host a meeting behind closed doors of envoys on Afghanistan from countries around the world in Doha, Qatar May 1-2 to discuss what should be done in the wake of the intensifying Taliban crackdown on women.
The Taliban reclaimed power in August 2021 as the United States and NATO troops withdrew from the country after almost two decades of involvement in the Afghan war.
The reclusive chief of the fundamentalist Taliban authorities, Hibatullah Akhundzada, has since imposed his strict interpretation of Islamic law, or Sharia, to govern strife-torn Afghanistan. He has banned girls’ education beyond the sixth grade and barred most Afghan women from public life and work across the country.
Akhundzada last week again dismissed international calls for easing curbs on women’s freedom, saying he would not allow any external interference in his Islamic governance, come what may.
“It is the success and good fortune of the Afghan nation that Allah has blessed them with an Islamic Sharia system,” Akhundzada told worshippers in a mosque in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar on Friday.
“I have promised Allah that so long as I am alive, not a single law of infidelity will find a place in Afghanistan,” the reclusive Taliban chief said in his defiant speech that marked the start of the three-day annual Muslim festival of Eid al-Fitr.
Other countries have refused to recognize the Taliban as Afghanistan’s legitimate rulers, citing bans on women’s education and work, among other human rights concerns.
Earlier this month, U.N. Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed, while sharing details of the planned Doha meeting, suggested recognition would also be on the agenda.
“We hope that we will find those baby steps to put us back on the pathway to recognition [of the Taliban], a principled recognition; in other words, there are conditions,” Mohammed told a seminar at Princeton University.
“Is it possible? I don’t know. That discussion has to happen. The Taliban clearly want recognition, and that’s the leverage we have,” she said.
The United States has said that any discussion of recognition of the Taliban at next week’s U.N.-hosted meeting in Doha “would be unacceptable” for Washington.
State Department spokesman Vedant Patel reiterated on Wednesday that the Taliban’s “human rights abuses towards women and girls…continues to be one of the key roadblocks to their self-proclaimed desire for international recognition.”
The draft resolution to be put forward on Thursday would also recognize and stress the need to address “the dire economic and humanitarian situation” facing Afghanistan, including through efforts to restore the country’s banking and financial systems.
The United States and other Western nations froze more than $9 billion in Afghan central bank foreign reserves after the Taliban takeover. Washington has since transferred a portion of the frozen reserves to a trust fund in Switzerland, strictly to be used for relief efforts.
Afghanistan is listed as one of the biggest humanitarian emergencies in the world, where U.N. estimates 6 million people are one step from faminelike conditions. The U.N. says more than 28 million Afghans, or two-thirds of the population, need assistance after years of war and natural calamities.
Margaret Basheer contributed to this report.
Update: Security Council to Taliban: Reverse Restrictions on Afghan Women, Girls
Saur 7: Fall of Daoud Khan Remembered
Daoud Khan
Tolo News: Thursday, April 27, 2023, is the 45th anniversary of the collapse of the first Afghan president Sardar Mohammad Daoud Khan. The People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan led a coup against Daoud Khan’s government. On the same day, after five years of his presidency, Daoud Khan and 18 of his family members were killed, and Noor Mohammad Taraki, head if the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan, came to power. Click here to read more (external link).
More than 290 injured in Kandahar accidents over Eid: officials
Ariana: Kandahar officials say more than 290 people were injured in traffic accidents over Eid ul-Fitr in the province. According to officials, 135 traffic accidents occurred over the three-day Eid holidays. A number of injured people blamed the accidents on reckless drivers. Click here to read more (external link).
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Family Cannot Afford Medical Solution for Teenager With Gender Issues
Tolo News: After an examination, a sixteen-year-old compelled to publicly identify as a girl in Nangarhar’s Chaparhar district would like to proceed as a boy in the future, but the family said that they cannot afford the cost of the treatment. Doctors said that an operation will cost 600,000 Afghani. Obaid Rahman Stanikzai, a doctor, said the youth had male organs, including a prostate. Nearly five years ago, in a separate case in Rodat district in Nangarhar, a young person also originally named Adela identified as a boy after surgery and was named Abdul Rahman. Click here to read more (externa link).
Banned From School, Teenage Afghan Girls Turn To Taliban-Run Madrasahs
Ahmed Hanayesh
Mansoor Khosrow
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
April 26, 2023
A group of girls wearing black face veils silently enter a madrasah in Afghanistan’s central province of Ghor.
Inside the Islamic seminary, dozens of teenage girls sit on the floor, rocking back and forth, as they recite the Koran, Islam’s holy book.
Among them is Zohra Jalali, who was in her final year of school when the Taliban seized power in 2021. The militant group soon banned girls above the sixth grade from attending school, shattering her dream of becoming a doctor.
Jalili is now among the thousands of teenage girls who have enrolled in Taliban-run madrasahs as a last resort to continue their education. The militants have allowed girls of all ages to study at seminaries in Afghanistan, a predominately Muslim country of around 40 million.
“We want our regular schools to be open,” the 18-year-old told RFE/RL’s Radio Azadi. “Besides religious education, we also want to study other subjects.”
The Taliban has vowed to root out all forms of the modern secular education that thrived in Afghanistan after the U.S.-led invasion in 2001 toppled the Taliban’s first regime.
Since regaining power, the militants have converted scores of secular schools, public universities, and vocational training centers into Islamic seminaries, leading to a surge in the number of madrasahs in the country.
The Islamist group has also vowed to overhaul the national curriculum and build a vast network of madrasahs across the country’s 34 provinces.
Tamina Qudusi, a former university student, told Radio Azadi that the Taliban’s attitude toward modern education is self-destructive.
“How can we [Afghans] stand on our own feet if we don’t have [modern] education?” she asked. “Uneducated women won’t be able to achieve anything.”
Qudusi enrolled in a madrasah in the northern province of Parwan after the Taliban banned women from studying at universities in December. She said attending a seminary would allow her to at least receive some form of education.
At Taliban-run madrasahs, students learn to read and memorize the Koran, which is written in Arabic, a language that few Afghans understand. They also learn about the teachings and sayings of Prophet Muhammad.
Neda Rahmani, a former university student from the southwestern province of Nimroz, said limiting education to religious studies is a detriment to Afghanistan, where men and women are needed in all fields, including in education, health, and even the security sector.
“The Taliban needs to invest time in thinking through and understanding the role of women in this county,” said the 21-year-old, who also attends a madrasah.
The Taliban has defended its efforts to root out modern secular education.
Mawlawi Abdul Jabbar Saqib, the head of the Taliban’s education department in Ghor, said “modern education is not compulsory for women.”
“They must get the correct knowledge of religion for themselves and their families,” he told Radio Azadi.
But many Afghan religious figures and teachers disagree. They have accused the Taliban of using madrasahs to brainwash the young generation with their extremist ideology and erase modern forms of education.
“We need modern education as much as we need bread and water,” said an Islamic scholar in Nimroz who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution. “We must have female doctors. We also need women engineers and teachers.”
Besides limiting girls and women’s education, the Taliban has also imposed severe restrictions on women’s appearances, freedom of movement, and their right to work.
Razia Haqshanas, a ninth grader in Parwan, has witnessed girls and women’s access to education gradually erode. She fears the Taliban might even ban girls from attending madrasahs.
“My future is dark here,” she told Radio Azadi.
Written by Abubakar Siddique based on reporting by Radio Azadi correspondents Ahmed Hanayesh and Mansoor Khosrow
Copyright (c) 2023. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave NW, Ste 400, Washington DC 20036.
Tolo News in Dari – April 26, 2023
Tajikistan’s Security Forces Kill Two Terrorists on its Border with Afghanistan
Khaama: “Two members of an international terrorist cell crossed the state border between Tajikistan and Afghanistan on Wednesday morning to conduct terrorist activities. The terrorists were eliminated in a joint anti-terror operation by the republic’s law enforcement agencies,” local media reported. The investigation is going on to identify the identity of the militants, the statement said. It also added that the incident happened in the autonomous province of Gorno-badakhsahn, Vanj District. Click here to read more (external link).
Zakharova Says Americans ‘Deliberately’ Left Weapons in Afghanistan
Maria Zakharova
Tolo News: The Russian foreign ministry’s spokesperson, Maria Zakharova, in a press conference claimed that the the US deliberately left weapons in Afghanistan, and “now they are destabilizing the situation because terrorists may get hold of them.” Speaking at the press conference, Zakharova said that “we will not be surprised if these weapons soon surface in disputed areas of the region and other places.” In the meantime, former US president Donald Trump, in an interview with Fox News, said that 700,000 advanced pieces of military equipment has been left in Afghanistan. “They are the second largest arm dealers in the world right now. We give it to them–brand new trucks, brand new planes, brand new guns, rifles. 700,000 rifles and guns, think of that: 700,000. They only need 40,000, probably not even that, so they are selling the rest, making a fortune, we left it there,” Trump said. Click here to read more (external link).
Islamic State Operative Behind Deadly Kabul Airport Attack Is Dead
Kirby
Jeff Seldin
VOA News
April 25, 2023
WASHINGTON — The leader of the Islamic State terror group cell that carried out the August 2021 bombing that killed 13 U.S. troops and about 170 Afghan civilians is dead, slain during recent clashes with Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban.
U.S. officials, who initially confirmed the death to VOA on the condition of anonymity in order to discuss the intelligence, declined to name the cell leader or say when or where he was killed.
It was also unclear whether the individual was targeted by the Taliban or was killed as a result of ongoing fighting between the two groups. In a statement the U.S. Defense Department said, “The United States was not involved in this operation.”
National Security Council Coordinator for Strategic Communications John Kirby confirmed the cell leader’s death in an email to VOA, calling it “another in a series of high-profile leadership losses” that the group has suffered so far this year.
Kirby said the cell leader was a key official “directly involved in plotting operations like Abbey Gate,” adding that the IS affiliate’s ability to launch additional attacks against U.S. interests has been diminished due to a series of setbacks inflicted by the U.S. and its partners, and even the Taliban.
Confirmation of the IS cell leader’s death came as multiple U.S. media outlets reported U.S. officials were contacting family members of the 13 U.S. troops killed in the attack on Kabul Airport’s Abbey Gate to inform them of the development.
The attack on Abbey Gate in the waning days of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan left a lasting mark on the United States.
Following the attack, U.S. President Joe Biden promised justice for those killed.
“To those who carried out this attack, as well as anyone who wishes America harm, know this: We will not forgive,” Biden said in a nationally broadcast address. “We will hunt you down and make you pay.”
But since the withdrawal, the U.S. has carried out just one counterterrorism strike in Afghanistan: Last July, a drone strike killed Ayman al-Zawahiri, the leader of IS rival al-Qaida, as he hid in the capital of Kabul.
U.S. Central Command, which oversees U.S. military operations in South Asia, has acknowledged two other operations but said the details remain classified.
In the meantime, the Islamic State’s Afghan affiliate, known as IS-Khorasan or ISIS-K, has spread across the country, with cells in the Afghan capital and a growing number of provinces.
Intelligence shared in a United Nations counterterrorism report earlier this year estimated IS-Khorasan has between 1,000 and 3,000 fighters but cautioned that the affiliate was looking to expand its reach, pumping out propaganda in multiple languages, including Persian, Tajik, Uzbek and Russian.
Top U.S. military and intelligence officials have also grown increasingly wary of the IS Afghan affiliate.
Last month, CENTCOM Commander General Michael Kurilla told U.S. lawmakers that IS-Khorasan has set its sights on striking the West.
“They can do external operations against U.S. or Western interests abroad in under six months with little to no warning,” Kurilla said, adding the likely targets would be in Asia or Europe.
U.S. intelligence agencies have likewise sounded alarms about IS-Khorasan’s ambitions.
Defense Intelligence Agency chief Lieutenant General Scott Berrier said early last month that it was only “a matter of time before they may have the ability and intent to attack the West.”
This past January, National Counterterrorism Center Director Christine Abizaid called IS-Khorasan the “threat actor I am most concerned about.”
U.S. officials have also expressed little faith in the ability of the Taliban to make good on their pledge to contain IS-Khorasan.
“The Taliban doesn’t have the precision to go after individuals,” CENTCOM’s Kurilla told U.S. lawmakers.
“They [Taliban] will do large, sweeping clearance operations,” he said, noting such operations are only “disruptive to a point.”
The White House’s Kirby, late Tuesday, defended U.S. efforts to target IS-Khorasan, despite the lack of strikes.
“We have made good on the president’s pledge to establish an over-the-horizon capacity to monitor potential terrorist threats, not only from in Afghanistan but elsewhere around the world,” he said.
As an example, Kirby pointed to the U.S. counterterrorism operation this past January in Somalia that killed IS operative Bilal al-Sudani, who played a key role in funding IS-Khorasan.
IS-Khorasan was quick to claim the August 26, 2021, attack on Kabul Airport’s Abbey Gate, using it to build momentum as the U.S. left.
But despite initial claims by U.S. military officials that the bombing was part of a coordinated attack on the airport, a subsequent Pentagon investigation determined that was not the case.
“This was not a complex attack,” Army Brigadier General Lance Curtis told reporters in February 2022, detailing the investigation’s findings. “It was a single blast, and it did not have a follow-on attack.”
According to the report, all of the death and damage was caused by the single bomb, which investigators said was powerful enough to send shockwaves through the tightly packed crowds at Abbey Gate, spreading 50 meters from the detonation site.
The Abbey Gate bombing put the U.S. military in Afghanistan on heightened alert until the very end of the withdrawal, and possibly contributed to a botched airstrike three days later that killed as many as 10 civilians, including an aid worker and seven children.
“The degradation of ISIS in the region continues to be a top priority for this administration,” State Department Principal Deputy spokesperson Vedant Patel told reporters during a briefing earlier Tuesday. “It’s something that we continue to work collectively on with our allies and partners and others in the region.”
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